Just noticed this.
New stats for September should be available soon, so I’ll just note in passing that, in the first complete month following the removal of comments at Commentary’s Contentions blog, site traffic fell 30% from the prior month, and 36% from the last entire month with comments (June). You might wonder if the drop-off could be attributed to seasonal factors, but other right of center sites and blogs – National Review, Weekly Standard, Powerline, Ace of Spades – all held steady or improved in the June-August time frame.
Of course, we may well be the only people in the world who care, presuming that in fact even we do (or as Zombies are capable of caring).
Comments 32
Sanctions and a bombing campaign after that!!
September 30th, 2009 at 3:39 pm
I am a proponent of compassionate Zombieism. I care, I care deeply, that JRub isn’t getting the audience she deserves, and America isn’t hearing the voice of Moses leading us through the Red Sea of Obamanasmatronyism.
It’s the comments. You know it’s the comments. There is no conservative website that isn’t thriving in this political environment. It was stupid of them not to get a handle on the troll situation, which I’m sure is the issue.
September 30th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
No stats, I suppose, on the Zombie variant?
September 30th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
We’re way, way up since June.
September 30th, 2009 at 4:52 pm
@CK MacLeod – Even if someone keeps beating us down.
September 30th, 2009 at 4:55 pm
Contentions may be striking back for your airing of the bad publicity. When I just came to ZC only the first two posts and the title of the third loaded on my screen, with no option to “see more”.
September 30th, 2009 at 4:57 pm
Preemption:
It must be because of the new blogger at contentions.
September 30th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
Ending comments was a blessing in disguise. Without ZC, there would never be a Mister Peanut, there would never be a Putin On The Ritz.
If they are really smart, they’ll have an article about our little band of brothers and sisters.
Unfortunately, they are probably too stuffy to do that.
September 30th, 2009 at 5:32 pm
@J.E. Dyer – No need for preemption. You’re the shiniest deck chair aboard.
September 30th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
So, Czar of the Zombies, am I the only one who can’t get the ZC homepage to come up? It keeps stopping the page download at about 10% of the page. For whatever reason, the top two posts do show up completely, and are fully accessible.
Ribbit, fuster-me-lad. Ribbit.
September 30th, 2009 at 7:49 pm
Apparently, a few people have been having problems, today. Initial investigation is pointing to a joint Podhoretzian-12th Madhist cyber-attack on my web host.
September 30th, 2009 at 7:53 pm
It’s still loading only partially. Another symptom is that it’s not loading the right hand side of the page.
And, only the first couple of comments on the Wall are loading. Update, now all the comments on the Wall are loading.
Somebody check to see if the Czar still has his soul. Is there a dipstick for that?
September 30th, 2009 at 8:01 pm
@J.E. Dyer – You and JRub are the only reasons I go to Contentions.
September 30th, 2009 at 8:13 pm
Problem solved, or should be. Was affecting IE users. Authors will be receiving more details via e-mail.
I still suspect the 12th Podhorists, but we may need to waterboard Howard to get to the truth of the matter.
September 30th, 2009 at 8:14 pm
@scientific socialist –
I wish I knew somebody who wrote for them who could write that piece.
@CK MacLeod –
Wha?
September 30th, 2009 at 8:34 pm
@Howard Portnoy – Sorry Howard, but Zombie national security is involved.
September 30th, 2009 at 8:37 pm
I still think the comment ban was a financial decision (and not troll related either) – which didn’t make it any smarter, obviously. But commenters have no financial leverage at all, whereas regular bloggers command at least a pittance. It’s odd, though, that JPod succumbed to zero-sum thinking. Trying vainly here to repress my Schadenfreude….
October 1st, 2009 at 11:01 am
P.S. Can a real zombie experience Schadenfreude once his/her former host has no fat left to chew?
October 1st, 2009 at 11:14 am
@Seth Halpern – Financial Seth? Howso?
October 1st, 2009 at 12:08 pm
JPod could have hired somebody to oversee comments, or he could have devoted the money to regular posters. That’s my hunch anyway. I think he was squeezed by short term exigencies..
There is another theory, that NZC is just a sideline anyway, but that presumes JPod has an even crampier world view I should think. The energy devoted to NZC would seem to bely that.
October 1st, 2009 at 12:25 pm
@Seth Halpern – There was a young woman overseeing comments (Gjermani ?) and her employment ended immediately before comments did.
October 1st, 2009 at 10:19 pm
@fuster – She never seemed able to deal with the task.
October 1st, 2009 at 10:39 pm
@Peter Shalen – The rules drawn up, as Dyer pointed out at the time, were unworkable and unsuitable to fix the problem with the comments.
October 1st, 2009 at 10:57 pm
I think Gjermani may still be employed in some capacity at COMMENTARY.
Anyway, she has a blog of her own, and has recently inserted herself at some unplumbable depth into the middle of a blogwar between RS “Saddam” McCain and Charles “Khomeini” Johnson. Details (and really, really long posts about Balkan fascists) at http://www.kejda.net/
I thought she meant well and think she still do mean well, and I believe she did play a role in opening The Last Thread at Contentions to comments, thus making it possible for the fallen angels to rally.
One of these days, one of us should probably ask her to solve the lingering mystery as to why comments were shut down. Maybe I’ll e-mail the post to her when I’ve had a chance to go through the September stats.
October 2nd, 2009 at 3:13 am
http://www.kejda.net/
October 2nd, 2009 at 3:14 am
Some of you may have noticed that COMMENTARY itself, while not sacrificing written content, has acquired the look and feel of a cheaper, more generic publication. I assume the Pods have taste, or access to those who do, so I’m thinking major donor problems to go with a circulatory down spiral since the magazine’s pre-neocon peak. As if the secular stresses on print media haven’t been bad enough, most American Jews, don’t forget, are still liberals, and there is a price to be paid by those who renounce that faith.
October 2nd, 2009 at 10:01 am
@Seth Halpern – Liberal Jews have caused the problems at deadcontentions?
October 2nd, 2009 at 10:41 am
fuster… oh never mind.
October 2nd, 2009 at 10:56 am
@Seth Halpern – What! never mind? How can I just never mind!! What are they doing? Where will they strike next?
Will they go after Jonah Goldberg’s tattered remnants of intelligence?
October 2nd, 2009 at 11:56 am
Kejda’s still with Commentary. (The comment toolbar is missing, so I’ll have to try to be intelligible without italics.) She’s an assistant online editor.
I think everyone here must understand that eliminating the comments at “contentions” was not personally directed at the intelligent, thoughtful contributors. Without putting words in anyone’s mouth, the impression I got was that it was the conjunction of problems presented by comments that prompted the decision.
Most folks here probably noted that Hot Air had to come out with a warning on comments just a few days ago. The main problems are (1) vile, inappropriate, and even legally actionable remarks by commenters; (2) the cheap ease with which that can be turned into a method of attack on conservative websites; (3) the expense of dedicating manpower to manage comments; and (4) the fear of lawsuit, at organizations with shallow pockets.
We can all differ on what we would do, faced with these realities. A lot of the old contentions readers have popped up in the comments at Pajamas Media, where they vet every new comment before allowing it to post. Roger Simon, Hollywood producer, has WAY more money than the Podhoretzes, even with NPod’s best-sellers in the mix.
I enjoy the writers at PJM, particularly VDH and Ledeen, and I occasionally comment. But you can’t get the back-and-forth going there that you could at contentions — or at NRO back in its ancient “comments-friendly” days — because of the comment vetting policy. It just takes too damn long for the comments to post. You come back the next day to see if anyone responded to something you said, and by then the interest and momentum are gone.
I was sorry to see contentions close the comments, because it was a unique site where you could engage with smart commenters in near-real-time. Unfortunately there’s a whole lot of crass stupidity in the comments at Townhall and Hot Air, and it gets harder to waste time wading through it. Plenty of it coming from the right as well as the lefty trolls.
And I’ve never developed an interest in the comments at, say, Powerline or LGF (the latter of which has gone ’round the bend on some things anyway).
So I miss the comments at contentions. That said, I don’t feel personally offended, or want to send JPod to the guillotine, for calculating that retaining comments would be more trouble than it was worth. That remains to be seen, I think. Maybe they’ll make the decision to restore comments at some point, and that would be great.
October 2nd, 2009 at 2:30 pm
My visits to Commentary dropped by > 50% after they ditched comments.
October 2nd, 2009 at 2:38 pm
Has there EVER been a lawsuit against a web site based on blog comments?
There are a number of simple, virtually cost-free methods to reduce or largely eliminate troublesome comments – especially at a relatively low-traffic blog like Contentions: Comment registration wouldn’t have cost anything, and could have been combined with shoot-first/ask-later enforcement of clearly stated anti-trolling rules. As for manpower, they could have asked for volunteers, presuming that the individual bloggers own efforts were inadequate to the task.
October 2nd, 2009 at 3:30 pm